This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and more specifically to regulating access to content by users of the online system.
An online system allows its users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Users may share information about themselves via an online system by posting content for presentation to other online system users.
Additionally, an online system may maintain groups of users, allowing a user to provide content to a group for presentation to each user included in the group. A group may be associated with a topic, with a location, or with any other suitable characteristic, so a user included in the group may more easily view or share content associated with the characteristic associated with the group. For example, users in a group provide content items to a group to simplify presentation of the content items to other users in the group.
However, if an online system maintains users who are members of an organization, such as a business, different users may have different access to content provided to the online system based on the users' roles in the organization. For example, the organization may limit access to certain information to users who are managers in the organization and prevent access to the certain information by users having other roles in the organization. While maintaining groups of users allows an online system to more easily distribute content to multiple users, conventional online systems do not allow group creation to easily account for different levels of access to content provided to the group by users having different characteristics, such as different roles within an organization.